


Qualia

by paxlux



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: AU, M/M, thieves in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-28
Updated: 2012-03-28
Packaged: 2017-11-02 15:57:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paxlux/pseuds/paxlux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur wakes.  Arthur wakes.  Arthur wakes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Qualia

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this [graphic](http://cheschirecat38.tumblr.com/post/18962896911/au-inception-inception-exists-only-in-arthurs) and the text prompt: _AU inception : Inception exists only in Arthur’s mind_. I stuck to the spirit, if not the letter, of the prompt.

Arthur wakes.

-æ-

The alarm hasn't gone off yet and he stares at the clock. He isn't sure what woke him. He remembers something like gunfire, but he hasn't fired a gun in years.

“Are you awake or are you going to maul me for asking such a daft question.”

The voice and accent appear in the doorway before the man does, smiling at Arthur, crookedly in a way that means he's happy.

Blue eyes. Tattoos. Eames.

The t-shirt he's wearing has what looks like a full moon and a fire-breathing gecko on it, where does he get this shit, black gym shorts, barefoot, sweaty from a run, looking like he walked off the pages of a sports-related jerk-off magazine except for less nudity.

“More nudity,” Arthur mumbles.

Eames smirks. “Those are the magic words—“

-æ-

“I thought ‘please’ was the magic word,” Arthur grits through his teeth, clutching his dislocated shoulder.

“Couldn't be more wrong, darling, it's ‘morphine’,” Eames says cheerfully, big hands on Arthur to shove his shoulder back into the socket, and Arthur screams at the pain, the sick slip of bone back into place, but Eames, the fucking asshole, keeps talking, “though one might argue ‘orgasm’ is the magic word, or ‘cocksucker’—“

“ _Motherfucker_.”

“Yes, that one too. It all depends on what you—“

Bullets puncture the wall above his head and Arthur grabs Eames with his good arm, yanks him down.

“You are _not_ fucking getting yourself shot out of the dream yet, you fucking lunatic! You aren’t fucking leaving me here!” He doesn't mean to say the last part, but pain is in the mind and it's scrambling his filter center.

Eames grips him as if he's holding Arthur together, eyes gone cold as more bullets snap into the concrete. He tugs them both around a corner on their knees.

“Love, this would be the last place I'd leave you. Now where's the escape. You set up a loop?”

Arthur shakes his head, points towards the gunfire. "Over there. See the elevator? It goes up, taking us out.”

Music pours in like rain, Edith Piaf and her golden French. Surveying the area, Eames nods. “The kick. We’ll have to run, Arthur.”

“After you.”

“No, after you. The better to see your arse, my dear.”

“Fuck you, Eames.”

“Not now—“

-æ-

Arthur wakes.

-æ-

“Not now, pet, don't you have a meeting at ten? Cable, or Connol, or—“

“Cobol,” Arthur corrects, fiddling with his mug. The name sounds very familiar, but Arthur shakes out his thoughts; the name should be familiar, he’s been staring at their office plans for a week. “They want me to build their new office complex.”

“Please do stay late staring at right angles while I mournfully stare at the ceiling, left alone in our bed, bereft of sexual contact since I took up with a highly-talented architect who's a workaholic,” Eames says, almost all in one breath, spatula pushing at the bacon as if he's condemning it to burn.

“Only if you pity me for taking up with a retired, reformed thief who is _so afraid_ of losing his magic touch that he steals my underwear. For practice.”

“The thief would be offended if he'd heard that correctly.”

Arthur drinks his coffee, eats his toast and bacon while Eames talks about a new safe he's learning to crack, the LAPD is worried and so is the safe maker because an art museum decided to install one against its insurance company's wishes and...

A safe. Something clicks.

“Where’s my Edith Piaf CD? Did you lose it again?” Arthur asks, flipping the paper over to read below the fold.

Eames grunts as he frowns at the eggs. “What? And why can’t you wait until I’ve served you your _entire_ breakfast before eating? Be civilized.”

“Edith Piaf. French. Singer. Beautiful music. You’re one to talk about being civilized.”

That's Eames's humoring expression, it's caused many a fight.

“You own an Edith Piaf album?”

Arthur sighs. “You remember—“

-æ-

“I'm on your side, right? The idea is _not_ to shoot me!" Arthur yells from the backseat of a taxicab of all places, for fuck's sake.

The military covered battle tactics in differing terrains, but the back window of a careening taxi in a dream wasn't one of them. He did fight in the hollow shell of a bombed-out car once, face and helmet pressed to ash-flaked metal, but this is…

Eames slams on the brakes, throwing Arthur against the back of the seats.

“What the _fuck_ , Eames?!” he shouts, righting himself and Eames says calmly, too calm for Arthur’s liking, “We’re in the apocalypse, darling, or sometime after, thereabouts. _Not_ my favorite timeline.”

The dream has shot skewed; all the cars lining the street, all the cars caught in traffic, are now empty, bent and twisted shells. Some are smoking, some are smoldering, down the street a car explodes.

“Fuck, I’m sorry—“ Something loud whistles overhead, fast and final, as they duck and another car goes up in a cloud of black smoke, fire, and glass. 

“Incoming!” Eames yells because there’s another loud whistle, two, rockets soaring shear-close to their taxi. “Arthur, Fallujah is not where I’d like to be right now, so if you don’t mind…”

“I’m working on it!”

“I’m not asking you to be the bloody architect of Atlantis, _just sodding build something else!_ ” An enormous RPG materializes in Eames’s arms and he leans back, kicks open his door to slide to the ground, hunched, combat-ready. He fires at the militarized projections and Arthur sees a smear of blood on his cheek before the street warps into a regular bustling metropolis and Eames is the dangerous man holding a giant weapon in the middle of the crush of mid-day traffic.

Arthur climbs into the front seat, Eames neatly slipping into the back, and then Arthur guns it. He weaves between cars, increasing speed, not even thinking, just driving.

“If you wanted to take me on a date, Arthur, all you had to do was ask.”

“Not if you—“

“Were the last man on earth, yes, I’ve heard it before. And frankly, I think I could survive a post-apocalypse with you,” Eames says, voice muffled as he stares behind them.

That might be the sweetest thing he’s ever said to Arthur. It’s a bright taste in his mouth, like the pixy stix he used to eat as a little kid.

“Only because we can shoot to kill,” he says.

“How romantic.”

-æ-

Arthur wakes.

-æ-

It wasn’t at all romantic how Arthur first met Eames, not at all. Or so Arthur says. Eames waltzed (almost literally, _waltzed_ ) into Arthur’s tiny architecture office and said, ‘I’d like to rob a bank. Your bank. How would I go about doing that very thing, and great Caesar’s ghost, how old are you.’

Arthur took one look at him, sizing him up, this scruffy Brit with big clever hands on resting on his hips, his eyes quick and bright like a good thief. He said, ‘I assume that’s not a euphemism for something, and I assure you, I believe I’m old enough. I can buy cigarettes, I can vote, I can even buy _alcohol_ for myself, I know, hard to believe in this day and age, Mr…’

‘Eames. Just Eames.’ The would-be bank robber smiled, going from messy-suave to little boy in under a second. ‘I’ve been hired by Nash & Co. to test their bank’s security systems. You are the man responsible for the building, yes?’

Nash & Co. had specifically requested Arthur for their bank headquarters; they wanted the building to be designed and constructed around the vault. The vault was being designed by an exquisite architect in the business, Miles, and Arthur jumped at the chance to build something around a genius and not the other way around. 

Now this man, this Eames, was standing in Arthur’s office, wanting to rob Arthur’s little prize jewel as a security systems test. And he didn’t like how he worded that in his head because the man was distracting, to say the least.

‘I am the man responsible, and I suppose I could help you, even though it sounds like cheating.’

‘Not cheating. Reconnaissance,’ Eames said, leaning forward to poke at the Newton’s cradle on Arthur’s desk. Clack clack clack clack, then he smiled and said, “Casing the joint,” in an American fucking accent. 

Arthur laughed, he couldn’t help it. ‘Very well. I’ll get Nash to send over the paperwork for your job, then we can discuss what you want to—wait, do you want the cash, safety deposit boxes, gold, account numbers, or…’

Eames grinned even bigger, crooked and brilliant. ‘Darling, I want it _all_.’ Then he flicked his wrist, a sort of sleight of hand, and he placed something on Arthur’s desk, his palm hiding it.

‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’

Then he was gone, disappearing from Arthur’s tiny office.

Leaving a single red poker chip and a business card, EAMES on one side, and ARTHUR printed in a sprawled handwriting on the other with a phone number beneath it.

Arthur exhaled. 

-æ-

Arthur inhales, breathing through the silence. Eames and Reiss, their chemist, are on a test run because Eames keeps complaining that the dreams are shaky at the edges, like straining seams waiting to unravel. Arthur privately thinks it’s because Eames is sick, running a low-grade fever, and publically, he’s said, ‘No, Eames, you asshole, it’s because of your fever, take some fucking Tylenol.’ 

He can keep things to himself, it is possible, he’s got so many secrets, he’s learned other people’s secrets, he’s like a walking vault, but around Eames, he sometimes speaks before he thinks. 

It’s fucking annoying and really, really shitty. As if Eames is _stealing_ from him. 

The first time they met was on a job. Arthur was a two-year veteran of dreamshare, having trained on the ropes with Dom and Mal and he was working solo to see what it was like. No, he wasn’t taking his first baby steps and no, he didn’t need fucking training wheels. Out of the military for three years and he wasn’t an idiot. Arthur has always been older than his years.

Arthur was running point for a simple extraction, simple enough until he followed a name trail to discover the mark was a bigamist, he was keeping a whole second family just an hour away from his first. 

‘The man must be a ninja,’ a voice came over Arthur’s shoulder, and he jerked, almost reaching to crush the person’s trachea.

Blue eyes. A smirk. Eames, the forger.

‘He has two families, two’ –Eames cleared his throat, pointing at a list of names— ‘rather _large_ families, nine sprogs total, he must be a ninja in bed as well. Or just some sort of megalomaniac.’

‘Creating an army of himself?’

‘Ready to take over the world. Or play footie. He’s got his own team ready to go, eleven and two substitutes.’

Eames forges the second wife, winking; the mark’s subconscious supplying the first wife, and all hell breaks loose because Eames decides to start a catfight. He blows a kiss at Arthur before a handful of manicured nails slashes across his face.

Arthur comes out of the dream to Eames’s laughter.

-æ-

Arthur wakes.

-æ-

He can hear Eames laughing somewhere. Or maybe it’s the television.

He needs to sleep. He can’t sleep. It’s nothing new, an issue he’s had since high school, insomnia that strikes deep into his bones and sometimes, Arthur simply can’t sleep.

His prescription is out. He heads to the pharmacy, to the smiling face of Yusuf and his round accent that’s round like his face, his hair, his calm voice telling Arthur, here’s your prescription, sir, and you might try less coffee. Just in case.

Arthur smiles because he does live on coffee, he _lives_ on it, and Yusuf gives him a box of decaffeinated tea for free. Chamomile. Yusuf looks like someone else he knows, he’s smiling at Arthur as if they’re old friends—

Tea. Chamomile.

Eames has his concerned face on when Arthur returns, but Arthur ignores it and crashes onto the bed.

He wants to sleep.

-æ-

Arthur sort of hates to sleep. It’s his _job_ , for fuck’s sake, to sleep and dream, and he really hates natural sleep. He hates how he needs it, considering he’s gotten used to the insomnia the military drilled into his brain like bullets from a semi-automatic. 

He hates to sleep. He watches Eames go under, feet crossed at the ankles, hands relaxed in his lap, looking as if he’s on a fucking vacation. He watches Eames awake, eyes opening slowly as if he’s just taken a nap and the forger always gives a little stretch, an unconscious movement, a little arch to his back, and Arthur wants.

He wants and he can’t have and he hates to sleep.

Sometimes he dreams of Eames.

Most of the time he doesn’t dream at all.

-æ-

Arthur wakes.

-æ-

It’s happening. The dream is coming more frequently and though he’s technically asleep to have the dream, he’s not getting any fucking rest. He sleeps like shit because of the dream and it’s possible the meds are shit too.

The tea isn’t helping. Nothing is helping.

Fuck.

The dream is happening over and over. He’s in a city he doesn’t recognize, which is odd since he’s been all over the world for work or with Eames, they travel like it’s second nature. He’s in a city and he can do whatever he wants. He builds skyscrapers and then with a squint, he razes them to the ground. He ignores right angles and creates buildings that are bridges, curved without a keystone. He makes a house float.

The streets fold in on themselves like an origami cube.

He can _feel_ the dream in his fingertips. When he opens his eyes, his heart races and his hands shake and his mouth is moving. One night, Eames elbows him awake, says, “You were talking in your sleep, darling.”

“Mmrf.”

“No, it was ‘this isn’t real.’ What isn’t real?”

Eames’s blue eyes are wide and he thumbs at the dark circles on Arthur’s cheeks, the purplish bruise-like color to his skin because of the dream. 

“This is real,” Arthur says, grabbing Eames by the wrist so he can feel his heartbeat. 

They sit in silence and then Eames nods. “Yes, this is real.”

-æ-

Unbelievable. Arthur is on a plane over the Pacific, smiling, and he can’t stop shaking his head.

Inception worked. At least, they think it worked. Fischer looks a little shell-shocked, the kind of look that comes with an epiphany in a dream, a hard perspective that leads to a lot of thinking, do dreams tell us who we are, what we should do, he bets Fischer blames it on grief.

Or relief at his father’s death.

Either way, it fucking worked, like Eames fucking said it would, the forger isn’t smug, just coy in his chair, feet crossed at the ankles, hands relaxed in his lap, as if they haven’t completely, _utterly_ changed the waking world.

Eames grins at him, winks, and Arthur wants to get on hands and knees and crawl across to Eames, slither up into his lap, and put his tongue to that grin.

Instead, he mouths, _L.A_. and Eames nods. 

_Wait for me_ , Arthur says without sound and a small hand gesture.

Eames nods again, a light in his eyes Arthur recognizes. 

_Of course, darling_ , Eames mouths back.

The rest of the flight, landing, and taxi, Arthur doodles. Skylines. Perspective down city streets that close to a final point, a dot inked black.

-æ-

Arthur wakes.

-æ-

The chalk wall is staring at him, black like the abyss. He’d painted it with the chalk paint back when he first moved into the apartment, before he’d started his own architecture firm, and he’s loved it ever since. Eames likes to list sexual positions and grocery items in the same column, then draw blueprints for how to break into someone’s panic room.

But Arthur cleans it, wiping it down, and the black is openly challenging him.

He hears a noise behind him; Eames at the doorway, hovering again, most likely because that phone call a minute ago was Ariadne, Arthur’s secretary, calling that Arthur hadn’t come in to the office again. For the third day. In a row. 

He doesn’t have time for work. The dream is pulling at his fingertips, at his palms, his wrists, up to his elbows. He has to draw the buildings, how they bend and fold under his command.

In the last dream, he made a building kneel before he fell off the edge and he woke when he hit the pavement.

He grabs his tools, even as he hears Eames say, “Arthur, please.” He’s explained the dream to Eames over and over, what the world is like in there, how freedom is pure and blinding, he can do anything and Eames could be anybody because he’s a thief, he steals everything, he could steal looks and facial structures and bone types and—

Eames clears his throat and Arthur can’t turn around to see him, he can’t, Eames, his gorgeous Eames whose sadness will crush Arthur.

He thinks Arthur’s obsessed.

“Arthur, it’s in your head.”

“Of course it is, Eames,” Arthur snaps, “it’s a fucking dream.”

He draws until the chalk is down to a nubbin and he’s scraping his knuckles, white streaked up his arms and in his hair and on his face.

He draws.

The dream won’t leave him alone. 

“Arthur.” Eames sighs, head in his hands. “Come back to me.”

Arthur sketches a house without doors, only windows.

-æ-

He hates it when there aren’t windows. He likes being able to see out, even in dreams.

They’re killing time in a test run, literally killing time by shooting floating clocks, this test is about the new mixture’s ability to replicate items in a disturbing, cloning type way, whether it will hold the dream stable with so much repetition occurring.

Eames aims carelessly and the shot is perfect, which irritates Arthur to no fucking end. “What if we were different,” he says.

Arthur isn’t sure what that means, so he shoots down three clocks in quick succession. “What does that mean.”

At LAX, after Sydney, after inception, Eames had waited for Arthur, and Arthur hadn’t said a word, merely collected his luggage, waved for Eames to follow him. They shared a taxi, then shared a hotel room, then shared a bed, and Arthur couldn’t feel anything but Eames as Eames fucked him into the mattress, saying, All these years, Arthur, all these bloody years, and Arthur said, I know, I know, we didn’t know why not, fuck.

They haven’t shaken each other off, and Arthur discovers they’re constantly touching throughout the days.

Different.

“What if you were some academic or stuffed-shirt banker,” Eames says, shrugging, and Arthur glares, “or whatever, love, you know,” he makes a complicated hand motion. “You as you, just not you.”

“That’s deep, Eames. Real philosophical.” He arches an eyebrow and Eames matches it. “I suppose you’d be a thief.”

Eames laughs, conjures a mirror and does the shooting-via-reflection trick. A grandfather clock explodes. “What else, darling.”

“Different, anything else in the world, and you’d still be a thief.”

“It’s fun and interesting. Builds character. Keeps me nimble. Flexible. Rich.” His tone is smirking and when Arthur looks at him, Eames is smirking, so Arthur kisses him even though Eames hates it, kissing in dreamspace, it’s not real enough.

Arthur thinks about it, the two of them, domestic, collecting rugs and books, odd lamps that break when they have sex on the couch, ignoring anniversaries, celebrating holidays, sleeping in on birthdays. Going out to eat with friends. Arguing at the movie theater. Working at some 9-to-5 job. Possibly having regular, run-of-the-mill dreams.

Eames adopting a cat. Arthur having to feed it constantly. Eames killing houseplants. Arthur burning the popcorn.

No running for their lives.

He can picture it, as a cuckoo clock glides by, replicating itself as fast as Eames can shoot it over Arthur’s shoulder.

He says, “I don’t know.” He aims his gun straight up and shoots. “Let’s get out of here.”

“More important things to do?”

Grabbing Eames by his grotesque shirt, Arthur says, “Yes. They involve nudity.”

“I do love nudity.”

A gun materializes between them, then spawns until there’s a storm of them, and Eames is laughing again.

“We already have guns.”

“Take your pick.”

-æ-

Arthur wakes.

-æ-

This stupid shit desk drawer won’t open, it’s fucking locked, and Arthur needs the gun, Eames keeps a gun in there, and Arthur doesn’t remember where the key is. He needs it _now_ , there’s noises coming from the kitchen, he’s in the apartment alone, fucking _alone_ , he was sketching mazes when he heard the noises.

One lazy Sunday, when they were naked and bored, Eames taught him how to pick locks. Eames, his sweet boyfriend who loves him and has moved to the couch lately because Arthur talks in his sleep and sometimes sleepwalks to the chalk wall to draw; Eames, who looks like his heart is breaking when he sees Arthur; Eames, who went to get stronger meds for Arthur because Arthur can’t drive anymore, the roads fold before his eyes, and he has the idea that if he crashes the car, it won’t matter; Eames, who says his name with so much love in it, he is a thief who’s stolen Arthur, but Arthur can’t go back.

Eames.

Arthur finds the lockpick kit hidden under the mattress and fumbles to unlock the drawer. He needs this gun, he needs it, the noises are getting louder, voices, he can hear voices, a male and a female.

The lock clicks, and Arthur yanks the drawer out of the desk. The gun clatters around, heavy, it’s loaded.

He hasn’t fired a gun since high school, when he was a marksman. He almost joined the military.

The voices are closer and then there are arms around him, saying, “Arthur, _Arthur_ , calm down, it’s okay, _you’re okay_ ,” Eames talking to him, but there’s voices, and where did Eames come from, Arthur’s alone, he’s panicking and the gun is so heavy—

The shot is loud.

And Arthur is on fire. His chest hurts. Blood everywhere—

-æ-

He’s bleeding like he’s been shot, maybe because _he fucking has._

“Fuck you, you fucking shitbag, motherfucking whore, son of a bitch, _I fucking hate you!_ ” Arthur yells at the projections chasing them, a bullet lodged in his chest, and he can’t run very fast, there’s a whistling noise when he breathes.

“Very fucking colorful language, Arthur, I approve most heartily,” Eames says, strong arm around Arthur’s waist, almost carrying him, jostling the bullet in his body. “In other circumstances, I’d say give them verbal hell, but I think the best we can do is get the bloody fuck out of here.”

He slept the night before, Eames curled around him, arm around his waist, like now, knees tucked behind his, like now as Eames shoves him ahead, he slept and he dreamed of an apartment, their apartment, with the rug, except there was blood, he’d been shot, getting out of bed maybe, he’d heard a noise and been shot and then Eames says in his ear, “Buggering hell, we’re going to have to take the alley. Maybe jump the train,” and Arthur’s kicked back into the moment, the job failing at the seams, the dream turning vicious around them.

“Jump the tracks. The rendezvous point is on the other side, in the station,” Arthur says with that disconcerting whistle and Eames looks fucking _worried_ , so sad it breaks Arthur’s heart, to the left of where the bullet is. “Jump the tracks, we’ll make it—“

And a bullet hits his heart.

-æ-

Arthur wakes.

-æ-

He can hear his heart. He sees a red die that’s tumbled under the desk. They’d lost it a month ago. They need it to play Monopoly.

Someone turns him. Blue eyes. Tattoos. Eames.

“Arthur. Stay with me. Come back to me, love, come on.”

The accent curls like fire.

“Arthur.”

He blinks, Eames’s fist curling against his chest.

-æ-

A hand thumps his chest, then moves to his jaw, “Arthur, wake up, we’ve got to run. Berg will be here any minute. I’ve got the passports and you’re coming with me this time, no splitting up. L.A. wasn’t just a joke, love, not to me.”

He can’t move yet, somnacin slowing him down like it hasn’t in the past.

Eames kisses him, bites his lip. “Arthur.”

His name rolls down his spine like water.

He blinks, feels the tug in his veins as Eames removes the cannula.

-æ-

Arthur wakes.

**Author's Note:**

> For thingswhatareawesome. [Qualia.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia)
> 
> If you want, you can leave a comment at my LJ [here](http://bashfulbetty.livejournal.com/5744.html).


End file.
